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(Questions? Contact the NASA STI Help Desk)

Simple Search

The Simple Search is a keyword search of NASA scientific and technical information. Simple Search differs from the Advanced Search because it is a general search and it searches only NASA information. Users do not need to use an "AND" between terms because the search automatically searches for ALL the terms in a search. Simple Search can be used to find:

• Titles
• Authors
• Dates
• Reports
• Abstracts (Paragraph summarizing main points in report)

Simple Search Examples

• neural networks finds publications with all search terms but not necessarily in any particular order
• madaras nondestructive testing retrieves records about nondestructive testing by author with the last name of madaras
• mars lander 2002 searches for records about mars and lander and the year 2002
• NASA CR 147848 and AIAA 96 3991 search for the specific reports NASA-CR-147848 and AIAA Paper 96-3991. Do not use any punctuation if searching for reports.
• Using numbers in a search retrieves records that have the number anywhere in the record such as in the publication year or in the report number.

Advance Search

Advanced searching differs from Simple Search because there is no keyword searching. Users input search terms in one or more search fields to find information. Users do not need to use an "AND" between terms because the search automatically searches for ALL the terms in a search. Users can also choose to narrow/broaden their searches by selecting and de-selecting the information sources they are searching on. (see Searching for NASA and non-NASA information below)

Users create more accurate searches by searching on specific search fields:

• Title
• Author(s)
• Dates
• Report number/Journal/Conference
• Abstract (Paragraph summarizing main points in report)

Advanced Search User Options:

• Change the default field search setting from "AND" to "OR" using the Combine fields selection. An "AND" search finds all the words in a search and an "OR" searches for any of the search terms. "AND" narrows a search and "OR" broadens a search.
• Change the Order results by publication date, date added to NTRS, title, author(s), or citation by using the drop-down menu box.
• Change the Order of results from descending (current reports listed first) to ascending (oldest reports listed first) by using the drop-down menu box.

Search Operators

There are several operators to assist in expressing your query. These operators can be used in either the simple or advanced search interfaces.

• A "-" indicates that the word must not be in the search results. For example, searching on -michael nelson in the Author field finds all records with the word "nelson", but not "michael". This gives different results than the search michael nelson
• A "*" at the end of the word is used for stemming. For example, searching on comput* in the Title field finds all records with "computer", "computing", "computation", etc., in report titles
• Enclosing the terms in quotes (") specifies searching for an exact phrase. For example, searching on parallel virtual machine in the Abstract field finds this exact phrase

Searching for NASA and non-NASA information

NTRS provides access to NASA information but it also collects scientific and technical information from organizations, institutions, universities, and other federal agencies with similar content. Users can select and de-select NASA Archives and Non-NASA Archives using the check boxes beside each site. By default only the NASA Archives are selected but users can select and de-select any of the NASA and non-NASA sites.

Select the databases you would like to search
NASA Archives	Non-NASA Archives
Ames Research Center	Aeronautical Research Committee (UK)
Center for AeroSpace Information (CASI)	arXiv Physics Eprints Server
GENESIS (JPL)	BioMed Central

Advanced Search Examples

1) Title and Author search:

Title:
Author(s):

Note: Author names can be input first name last name or last name first name. No punctuation is necessary between first and last names.

2) Author and Date search:

Title:
Author(s):
Date:

Note: Search "date" using a single year only as was done in this example.

3) Report Number/Journal/Conference search:

Title:
Author(s):
Date:
Report Number / Journal / Conference:

Note: Report numbers should not have any punctuation like hyphens and dashes. Use the Report Number/Journal/Conference search to find report numbers, journal titles, and conference proceedings.

Browse

A Browse search retrieves all the records of a specific collection in NTRS. Only one collection is browsed at a time. To learn more about the different databases making up NTRS, go to About the NTRS collections.